Heroes' Adrian Pasdar: Fewer Episodes Will Be Better for Viewers

Adrian Pasdar, who plays flying U.S. Senator Nathan Petrelli, said after working on such a long production schedule this season, shooting only 18 episodes will be "a relief."

"If things start shifting around, they can always add more at the end, but doing 25 episodes this year was nearly 11 months of work," Pasdar told TVGuide.com. "We love the work, but in order for the quality to be maintained, you can't just keep grinding it out.

"The pacing will be a little better — we were sometimes shooting three episodes at once, and there's no way that something doesn't slip through the cracks," Pasdar said. "It just gets crazy."

Pasdar's character is heading toward a showdown with Sylar (Zachary Quinto) in Monday's season finale, the end of which provides plenty of interesting ground to cover in the show's fifth volume. (Stay tuned for a tease-y finale preview next week!) Because of the complexity of the coming story, Pasdar said the shorter season would benefit the show's fans most of all.

"This will make it better for everybody, and ultimately for the viewers," he said. "It will be a more streamlined version of a show that's very complex. It will still maintain its complexity, but I think it will be easier to follow."

What say you? Is quality better than quantity when it comes to Heroes?